May 12, 2011
Quick Slant is an array of brief insights and occasionally opinionated overviews of collegiate athletics in general and the Vanderbilt Commodores in particular.
Friday is Commencement, the biggest day of the year on this campus, and 63 Commodores will be walking during the morning ceremonies. The athletic department hosts its annual Graduate Reception Thursday for student-athletes and families. Vanderbilt also conducts an alternative graduation day May 17 especially for spring sport student-athletes who are still competing and unable to attend Friday’s main event. Chancellor Zeppos presides at this special ceremony, too.
In case you’ve wondered how this baseball season compares to 2007 when we won the SEC regular season title, here’s the bottom line: we went 22-8 and won the East by five games. Arkansas won the West at 18-12 that year. South Carolina has the SEC record for wins in a league season, going 25-5 in 2000. We are 19-5 heading into the Florida series and then closing at Georgia next week.
Individual game tickets for the regular season finale baseball series with Florida Friday evening through Sunday are still available but full houses are again expected. A frequently asked question page was posted on this site Monday that some will find helpful.
The good news is that the National Commodore Club is up in virtually every measurable category as its deadline of May 31 approaches. New memberships are up, the percentage of renewing members has increased and total giving is ahead of last year’s pace. This is not to be interpreted as that the NCC has arrived at the Promised Land; there are still plenty who need to get “on board”. We must grow dramatically to reach the likes of peer schools such as Northwestern, Duke or Stanford. But we’re headed in the right direction! If you have not renewed your membership please do so by May 31 to be an active member for the 2011-12 academic year. If you have renewed, thank you, and please consider helping us reach our goal of 1,000 new members by recruiting someone else.
Name dropping –Roy Neel, who wrote Dynamite, the definitive book on the first 75 years of Vanderbilt basketball in 1975, will be in Hawkins Field for the Florida series. Neel has been a Washington, D.C. political insider for decades but has stayed in touch with Vanderbilt athletics… Sarah O’Brien, the gritty Commodore bowler who shined at last month’s NCAA Championship despite facing hip surgery, underwent a successful procedure Monday and is expected back on the lanes in September… James Franklin will be one of the faces in the crowd at Saturday’s Iroquois Steeplechase, a Nashville tradition since 1942.
